ON May 3, 1315, eight years into the reign of Edward II, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, obtained the King’s permission to fortify his manor house at Bampton in Oxfordshire. In this lies the origin of Bampton Castle, the exquisitely built and picturesque remains of which survive incorporated into a former farmhouse, called since the 17th century Ham Court (Fig 1). Although little known and neither finished nor ever used in anger, inform and purpose this is one of the more unusual and puzzling of England’s castles.
Aymer was born in about 1275. His paternal grandparents were the French nobleman Hugh, comte de la Marche, and Isabella of Angoulême, widow of King John of England and mother of Henry III (r. 1216–72). This made Aymer’s father, William de Valence, Henry’s half-brother, a familial link that yielded rich rewards. It also gained de Valence vast estates in France, in Poitou (centred on Poitiers), which passed to Aymer at his father’s death in 1296; he inherited his English, Welsh and Irish lands and the earldom from his mother in 1307. Further French lands, in the Pas de Calais, were acquired on his second marriage, in 1321, to Marie de St Pol (d. 1377), the founder, in 1347, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, who commissioned her husband’s sumptuous monument and effigy in Westminster Abbey (Fig 5).
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
